A roundup of other birds in Pelham Bay Park on our April 4 hike:

Great Blue Heron, in flight. We’ve seen them before in other areas, but didn’t see any last year in Pelham Bay, so this was a nice treat.

Double-Crested Cormorant - threatened in the early part of the 20th century, and after rebounding, threatened again by pesticides in the 1950s and ’60s, double-crested cormorants have come back so strongly in some areas of the United States that U.S. Fisheries & Wildlife is now exercising population control.

Turkey Vulture - I’ve written before about carrion birds and the service they do us. And no matter the revulsion we might feel when we see them eating, vultures are majestic in flight.

Field Sparrow - dainty Field Sparrows have a sweet, trilling song.

Common Grackle - “Common Grackles are abundant and widespread. They have grown in numbers and extended their range westward, following the spread of agriculture. Their tendency to form large flocks has them suspected of causing immense damage to crops, and this has made them the target of eradication campaigns, though their numbers remain strong.”

Northern Flicker - these pretty brown woodpeckers mostly forage on the ground, rather than against a tree trunk.

American Robin - ubiquitous, but sometimes one just begs to have his portrait taken.

Aside from gulls, blackbirds, starlings, etc. — also seen but not caught on camera were:

• Red-Bellied Woodpecker
• American Crow
• Numerous Swallows too quick to ID

Because it just isn’t a shore hike without some quality egret time …

(part one of a nice fat egret photoset - you can also see part two!)

This Northern Mockingbird gave us a prolonged concert today in Pelham Bay Park.

These birds are something of a success story; according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab they’ve rebounded from lows in the nineteenth century, when many were trapped or taken from nests and sold as cage birds.

Today’s visual feast is from a hike along the shores of the Twin-Former-Islands, in Pelham Bay Park. The remnants of someone’s party, trapped in the rocks, beat themselves against the crags, strange modern ghosts.

Today’s image is another from Monday’s hike.

Here, lichen is doing the work of helping this stump decompose. Lichen, a compound organism, is not only important to fertilizing the forest, but is also a source of food for many animals. In winter, deer rely particularly on lichen when other food is scarce.

Lichen is also a signal of air quality - it does not survive when pollution is too high.

The absence of lichen in a forest is one signal that the ecosystem is unhealthy - its presence here is a good sign.

Today’s daily is brand-new, shot during a more than six-hour hike yesterday at Pelham Bay Park.

Old growth feeds new growth. The forest learns from itself - but not in isolation. Surrounded by urban development, the oldest trees in this park date back to the American Revolution. The woods returned after Dutch and English farmers moved out in the 1700s, and in the 1800s this acreage was officially declared parkland.

That the forest has survived long enough to complete this cycle is a mark of its success. Isolated dead wood is a sign of life - as any gardener knows, compost is the key to healthy new growth.